


Nurture the Light

by Pookaseraph



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Medical Grossness, Starscourge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: Cor Leonis rescues a young Prompto from Niflheim, but the boy's affliction demands a stop in Tenebrae to visit the Oracle.





	Nurture the Light

**Author's Note:**

> For the Kink Meme: https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3451.html?thread=3135611#cmt3135611

Cor tried his best to look innocuous, not an easy task when he was hundreds of miles behind Niflheim enemy lines with a fake passport and a hastily grown out beard. In front of him at the cafe table was an untouched cup of coffee. He was a Southern Gralean controlled demolitions expert recently returned from Cartanica. He placed unremarkably in his civil engineering program at the Uelth--

A woman sat down across from him and gave him an amused look, Vivian Argentum. She had the sexy librarian look down, her glasses perched on her nose and the low-cut blouse and open lab coat accentuating her breasts. Her dark hair was done up in its usual bun.

"Mr. Horton," she greeted him.

"Doctor Ellsworth," he answered in response. They had been together at the Ueltham Technical Institute, at least all of that was supposed to be the case. Cor had never much cared for subterfuge, but he understood the necessity with Viv as deep undercover as she was. "So glad they let you out now and then to see old friends."

She smiled, just a faint one. "Well, it wouldn't do to have no fun, would it?" After a few moments she produced a small envelope and pushed it across the table to him. Cor took it and placed it into his jacket. He'd review it later. "I was thinking I could use a vacation."

'Vacation', a code word. Clarus hadn't mentioned that they might need to extract Vivian, but, then again, it had been almost three weeks since he'd received his orders. "Somewhere cool?" He asked, expressing the negative answer to the inquiry first, and waiting for her response.

"Somewhere warm," she answered. It was urgent, then. "Eat some spicy food, go off somewhere where no one knows your name..." Very urgent, worried about her cover being blown urgent.

"Maybe you should put in for a vacation?" He suggested. "Can't have everything going to pieces while you're away."

She tapped her finger on the table twice, just an innocuous gesture. Two days.

"I'll let you get back to it," he said.

An hour or so later he was in his crappy hotel room - or Leo Horton's anyway - and looking over the items that Viv had provided. They'd inserted her almost three years ago, hoping to get _anything_ about the MT program. The little roboshits had been making their pushes into Lucis for years now, and although they were without any real combat ability, they were also still capable of shooting things. Better progress would mean the Lucian military would be overrun in a matter of months.

Viv had managed to get him detailed schematics of the part of Zegnautus Keep that supposedly held some of the most advanced test subjects for the MT program, and Cor was going to either explode the shit out of it or steal something before he booked it out of town.

Cor sighed and pulled out his phone, the shitty one, he missed his Crownsguard one immensely. He called into 'work' out in Cartanica. "Hey, Boss. Things are going well in the city, saw Angie today, girl really needs a vacation. Should be about two days to take care of the business needs and then I'll be heading out."

A day and a half later, Cor snuck into Zegnautus with Viv's credentials, broke into the highest security areas, and found himself face to face with rows upon rows of... little children. Tiny, pale, blond children with violently red eyes. He walked up to one, saw it look up at him with a mix of wonder and hunger. Not baby hunger, though, no... Cor saw that look only too often on the daemons that prowled areas beyond the Wall... This child, _all of them_ , were part daemon.

Cor made the only obvious choice: explosive charges every third pillar, prepared for a dead man's switch triggered detonation... took every data tape that wasn't nailed down, and then he grabbed the first kid he saw and left. He didn't have to feel good about it, but he didn't feel as bad when the kid clawed at his chest, tiny baby fingernails trying to rip through his shirt and skin and he hissed. The damn kid _hissed_.

He waited for several minutes at the train station, eventually having to shove the kid in a duffel so he wasn't yowling from the sun exposure. Cor waited, calm, perfectly calm, nothing to see here. No he wasn't fighting down a wince from where his hand was resting against the thing's mouth and its fanged teeth were digging into his hand.

Two minutes before the train was set to board, his phone chimed. He looked down at it, from Vivian, just one word: Godspeed. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and boarded the train without her. Maybe she was dead, maybe he could extract her later, maybe her handler would reach out to Cor in the coming months. Cor tried not to let it bother him as he boarded the train and carefully settled the bag on his lap, his hand settled over the kid's mouth to keep him quiet even as he continued to bite down hard against his hand, fang like teeth digging into his skin.

The train was almost an hour and a half outside of Gralea when they finally entered a tunnel and Cor decided to release the switch he'd been holding. The tunnel itself might have triggered it, or his releasing it, he didn't know, but at least he'd put a dent in the Gralea war machine. Some days that was the only thing he had to feel good about.

It was fairly easy to make it to Fenestala Manor in Tenebrae, even with a squirming child-sized daemon, and Queen Sylva received him with little fanfare. A beautiful woman in her early thirties, and well known to be sympathetic to the Lucian cause, the Queen had made Fenestala Manor a haven within Imperial occupied Tenebrae for anyone from Lucis.

"Marshal? You're injured."

He'd barely noticed, but the claws must have dug deeper than he'd thought. "I need you to see to... this." He held up the bag and the Oracle looked down at it, and even she recoiled in the moment, looking down at the red eyed child.

"Sweet Shiva...," she gasped, but not much later she nodded. "What was done to him?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

She tended to Cor first, the Scourge tainted bite and scratches down his chest, and then she took the boy and set him down on a small table. "He has been deeply afflicted by the Scourge, but it has not yet fully taken hold. That is the point of no return. As it stands, I fear he may be beyond my ability to save."

"I need to report in," Cor said. "I... do what you can."

Cor headed into the open air balcony and winced as a child's scream rent the air. He pulled his Crownsguard phone from the Arsenal and then dialed Clarus.

"Cor," Clarus answered immediately, voice relieved. "I just heard about Vivian and feared the worst."

He hung his head. "She's dead?"

"You didn't know?"

"I suspected. She texted me."

"There were reports of a major explosion inside Zegnautus," Clarus said.

"That was me." He took a deep breath, fighting down the ill feeling from Viv's death and the reminder of what he had done. "I used Viv's credentials to break in and found... the early stages of their MT production. I got some data tapes and... a subject."

"A subject?"

"A child..." A punctuating wail came from behind him and he turned. "Red eyes, fang and claw..."

"You stole one?!" Clarus sounded horrified. "I take it the explosion was for the rest of them?"

"Yessir."

"What's the saying?"

"War makes monsters of us all, Sir," Cor answered without hesitation. "I'm in Tenebrae having the boy seen to, the Oracle isn't hopeful."

"Report back when you can," Clarus said. "Cor... you made the right call."

"I know, sir," Cor answered. That didn't make him feel any better about it. He would have felt no remorse about torching a daemon's nest, but it felt far more calculating and callous when he could hear the screams and wails of the thing that sounded more childlike than monster. If the Oracle could save this one... was he a monster for consigning the rest to death? In all likelihood.

He concluded his call and returned to the Oracle's side, and she gestured for him to sit, which Cor did, and she handed over the child, leaving it to sit on Cor's leg, held by his arms. It grabbed at him, fingers digging into Cor's arm, but they were fingers now, not claws, and it hurt little more than pinpricks. The Oracle, by contrast, looked wrung out and exhausted.

"Your Majesty--"

"I just need a moment," the woman said, and Cor, well familiar with a monarch who overextended himself in the name of his people, neither protested nor commented. "He's..."

The kid screamed again, and Cor rubbed his back, only for him to lean forward and vomit black bile on the floor that smelled like death, rot, and fear mixed together. The stench was bad enough to almost make Cor vomit as well. For Queen Sylva there was no 'almost', Cor helped her take a few steps, but she too lost the contents of her stomach, although it was not sick and black.

"It... seems we've made a mess of the receiving room," he said, trying to make light of it as he used his free hand to lead the Queen to a chair far away from the smell.

The kid then made another heaving noise, and Cor brought him back to the mess, and he vomited again, inky black death, heaving and heaving, and wailing between each heave. He finally quieted, passed out in Cor's arm like a rag doll. He pressed his fingers to the boy's throat feeling a faint heartbeat there. Not dead.

"Could you... see him cleaned," Sylva said after Cor returned to her side.

"Will he make it?"

Sylva shook her head. "I could not say yet. That is far from all of his taint, simply the easiest to fix." She had a servant summoned, and Cor was escorted to a beautifully decorated chamber and a bath. He set the kid down on his side on a mat, and peeled off his own jacket and scrubbed his hands before he began to draw a bath.

"Oh," a tiny, female voice said, and he glanced up to see a young girl, perhaps a few years old, with brilliant blue eyes and pale blonde hair. "Hello."

He nodded, and then went back to what he was doing. He stripped the boy of the black... leggings and shirt that seemed designed to cover every inch of skin, only for it to begin to sizzle from the bright sun. 

"Close those drapes," he ordered, pointing behind him, and the tiny little girl ran there and pulled them closed. It didn't fully block out the sun, but it did mean his skin only pinked rather than blistering.

"He's sick," the girl said, and Cor nodded.

It took him a few moments to find a decent position, and eventually the little girl helped by holding the boy under his armpits to keep him from tilting over while Cor scrubbed. He didn't think it was a great idea for her to be touching the kid - him either - but at least this was Tenebrae and not Lucis. She must be close to the Oracle if she was wandering around the Manor unmolested.

Cor continued his cleaning, and when he turned the boy's arm he caught the black bars on his wrist, turning his hand and scrubbing only to realize it was a tattoo, some sort of bar code imprinted on the boy... a part of him wondered how that was supposed to work if he was heading towards the daemonic, but he probably didn't want that answer.

"What's his name?" The girl asked.

Cor looked up at her. "What's yours?" Because he needed a moment to think. The kid didn't have a name. Cor wasn't even certain he could tell what the kid's number had been, much less a name.

"Lunafreya," she said.

Oh. Cor startled for a moment when he realized the Princess was helping him bathe the kid. He tried to think. He wasn't really the paternal type, he didn't... think about kids, or names, or anything of the sort, but he knew Viv was... had been. What had she said... he'd given her shit about it... quicksilver, then again, she'd been living silver herself. "Prompto, Prompto Argentum."

"Prompto," she said. "It's a lovely name."

Cor nodded, dumbly. It was a dead woman's name for the son she would never have... for a son who might not last long enough to care one way or the other. When he'd finally scrubbed the kid clean... Prompto, he scrubbed _Prompto_ clean, Cor drained the bath and wrapped the kid tight in a towel and then the Princess led him towards another room, a quiet, _brightly lit_ room.

"He can't go in here," Cor said. "He's... he's fighting the Scourge."

The girl nodded and then took a few moments, walking into the room, hopping up on desks and dragging down curtains, going from table to desk to chair as she closed each one of the many windows off. Cor finally took Prompto into the room and set him carefully down on the bed where he curled.

"We use the light to brighten the healing of those who come to us seeking solace," the Princess said. "When he is well, I'm certain he will look out and enjoy the mountains."

Cor didn't have the heart to tell her he doubted that very much.

*

Lady Sylva was often gifted with sight into the darkest recesses of humanity given her position as Oracle. She saw those afflicted with the deepest darkness and despair and helped lift that weight from them... but even she was shocked by the darkness within the little boy that The Immortal had brought before her.

Drawing the Scourge from a body was a relatively simple task among the recently infected. Hope still flickered, and it took only the faintest touch of the Grace of Bahamut to allow them the chance to heal themselves as much as she brought them succor. The boy was too young to understand hope, and too ravaged by the Scourge to have much light left to him. When she had first touched him, she was worried that not even Bahamut would allow the boy's healing. For time immemorial it was forbidden for the Oracle to try to heal those that Bahamut would not allow His Grace to touch.

But allow it He had.

That first day she did little but draw the most obvious of the Scourge from the boy, he'd vomited a mixture of what might have been daemon blood or something like viscera. Even hours later, she was still reeling from those first effects. 

However, not even the fretting from her retainers - 'Ma'am is it truly wise to spend yourself so completely on one orphan boy?' - could not keep her from returning to the boy's side. When she arrived in the boy's room, she found him flanked by Umbra and Pryna, the two Messengers being used as bolsters to keep the boy upright while his back rested on a bedpost.

Cor fixed the baby with an unimpressed look and waved the spoonful of food in front of him again, only for the child to turn away. "This is good food, you picky little shit."

She snorted. 

"Your Majesty." He straightened, and only her gesture kept him from standing before her.

"Here." She handed over a bottle, recently prepared. She'd had to have servants go to the markets to get what she needed. "He... I believe he's been fed only liquids... blood."

Cor stood and took the bottle, and she watched the understanding dawn on his face. He returned to his seat in front of the boy and then held the bottle out for him. Sylva noticed that his eyes were still deep red, still touched heavily by the Scourge. Cor took the bottle and tilted it as the boy greedily scarfed at it before whining... and then looking at Cor like he was terrible and mean, and the man sighed and picked him up, cradling him in one arm and trying to feed him like that.

"That's what he vomited up?" He asked.

Sylva nodded, and then a few moments later she settled onto the floor next to Cor, and reached a hand out to touch the boy's stomach. "It still runs in his veins. He likely won't feel anything this time, but... please hold him."

Again she reached for the boy, bringing the Grace of Bahamut to bear against the darkness inside of the boy, each tendril of darkness being tugged and yanked, and despite her assurances the boy whimpered.

Luna sat beside her a few moments later, her hands touching at Sylva's wrist, and then at the boy's forehead. "It's alright, Prompto," Luna said. "Be brave."

The more Sylva tugged at the darkness, the more and more the light inside of the boy flickered, until finally she had to stop. It was no good, at this rate it would be months, if not years, for her to pull the remainder of the Scourge out of Prompto.

"Whatever's been done is quite thorough, he's... still human, but it's a close thing."

Cor nodded, silent, and she saw his jaw tilt a bit, annoyed or concerned.

"I realize this might sound odd," she said. "But he's... the Scourge plays upon a man's mind as much as his body, it snuffs out the remains of hope and joy. When those things are strong, a person can fight off the worst effects of the Scourge without an Oracle for years. A child doesn't... doesn't understand the future or hope, not the way you or I do."

"Just wants to eat and shit and cry," Cor said, clarifying.

"Not a father, I see," Sylva answered, but her smile was genuine, and it wasn't as though the man was entirely wrong. "If he's to be cured he needs to be lent that strength. That tiny light needs to be preserved while the dark swarm swirls around him."

The man nodded, taking in the worlds. "So what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to hug him."

Cor blinked at her for a moment, confused, and then he looked down at the little boy most of the way through his bottle. He seemed bored of it, though, and Cor took it away and then after another moment he shouldered Prompto and ran a hand over his back. "You tell Regis or Clarus about this and I'm never going to forgive you, Kid."

He was clearly no expert at soothing words, as the litany of assurances that came from him were more along the lines of 'you've got this' and 'keep on going' and less 'there, there, it's alright', but it seemed to work well enough for the purpose. Beneath his hands, the flickering and fading light in Prompto stabilized and warmed, and again Sylva dove in to pull each tiny fleck of darkness from the boy.

It would take another day, perhaps two, one of the longest healings that Sylva could imagine, and she invited Cor and Prompto to a family dinner, and the boy sat on Cor's lap and the man fed him pea soup, pureed beyond recognition.

Ravus and Luna sat dutifully through the five course meal, and then afterwards they headed off while Cor continued to try to get Prompto to eat the soup.

"It doesn't feel right," Cor admitted a few minutes after the kids had left.

"Why not?" To Sylva's eye he was doing well enough. He took instruction well and had already learned how to properly do up a cloth diaper, and wash it. He fed Prompto, met his eyes - even red as they still were - and rocked him to sleep at night.

"Trying to show the little guy... light? I vaporized his... siblings..." Cor said a moment later, and Sylva understood. She was the Oracle, and although she did her best to keep the light strong, she understood that not all of the world could live bathed in pure light, everyone had darkness within them, even her.

"I can't grant you peace or succor," she answered. "But I can tell you that I could have saved only one. As it is, I'm still uncertain I will be able to cleanse him of that darkness without snuffing out the light within him. If you must have your penance, help me save the one you rescued."

That didn't seem to comfort the man, but he nodded, and tried to feed Prompto again, finally getting him to eat the pea soup and he smiled. "See?" He told the boy. "Not so bad. You don't get to be picky."

In response, the boy smiled, tiny little fangs still visible, and eyes still glowing red, but Cor didn't wince away, he smiled in response.

"Atta boy." A few more bites and the man finally excused himself. "Alright, kiddo, Luna says that you're going to get the greatest honor in all of Eos: riding around on Pryna's back."

It took her a few minutes to catch up, but Sylva watched as Cor carefully set Prompto on the back of the Messenger, and then he stood, his legs flanking the dog-formed Messenger's haunches, hands at his armpits, and the three of them carefully wandered around the vast gardens of the Manor.

"Still he frets."

Sylva startled only slightly, still unused to Gentiana's coming and going. She'd come to the Manor only a month or so ago, and Sylva still didn't know her purpose. The woman was the spiritual remains of the very first Oracle, and a small part of Sylva wondered if she was here to bookend the line. "That he does. _I_ still fret. Does Bahamut really intend the boy to live?"

The Messenger nodded. "All the pieces must be in place, and so does He allow his succor to touch one boy."

It was the first confirmation that Sylva had gotten of what she had already suspected: they would soon be heading into the Twilight and Night, the Nadir of Eos. The young Noctis, still barely one year old, would be Chosen...

Sylva's daughter would be the last of the line of the Oracle.

"I am sorry that you must know this way," Gentiana apologized, and Sylva nodded in turn. The Oracle was generally fated to die young, but that did not change the sadness at the knowledge that the end of her line was at hand.

Another day of healing passed, and the next day Sylva finally felt well enough to visit the Immortal in Prompto's room. The boy was settled between Umbra and Pryna, Umbra as his pillow and Pryna his blanket, it was clear no matter her concerns the Messengers that allied themselves with House Fleuret approved of him.

"He likes it when you read to him," Sylva heard her daughter say, and she watched as Luna passed a book over to the Immortal, seated only a few feet from the boy.

He looked at her, skeptical, but took the book regardless and cleared his throat. "In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a nest..." She listened as one of the most feared men in the Lucian Crownsguard read to a tiny boy from the Very Hungry Chocobo. She looked at him, a tiny, important boy... and Sylva embraced the certainty of a dark future, in the hope that the light could be preserved.

**Author's Note:**

> The first line to 'A Very Hungry Chocobo' is, of course, taken and modified from The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.


End file.
